KONTROLL
R, 106 mins.

Claustrophobically set in the labyrinthine murk of the Budapest subway system, Nimrod Antal’s “Kontroll” is a dim, airless picture. You’re apt to feel a little sickly while watching it, and not only because its idea of a sight gag is to have a narcoleptic fall face down on a heap of greasy, ketchup-slathered French fries. In fact, the fluorescent-lit, rat nest squalor of the setting is the movie’s chief pleasure. Hopped up and hyper-styled like a high-concept remake of “Trainspotting,” Mr. Antal’s debut film (or is it his Hollywood calling card?) recycles a breed of manic grunge hipsterism that’s been dated in these parts long before Bill got killed.

Sandor Csanyi stars as Bulcsu, the no. 1 zero in a motley crew of civil servant bottom feeders tasked with random checks on subway riders for their tickets or passes. They’re supposed to be rejects, but their “kooky” personalities and Salvation Army couture scream hipster, run-of-the-mill movie variety. Plot-wise, they tussle with an uptight rival crew, harass various “quirky” passengers (a gypsy, a pimp, an outlandish gay), and chase after the slippery punk Bootsie (Bence Matyassy), who lives to antagonize the ticket kontrollers. The Bootsie subplot allows Mr. Antal’s to indulge his signature directorial move, the steadycam-sprint down a corridor indifferently scored to weak techno.

Amid all this noise, feeble complexities attempt to assert themselves. A serial killer who’s been pushing people in front of trains may or may not be Bulcsu’s spiritual doppelganger. Moreover, everything in “Kontroll” might be read as Bulcsu’s nightmare, or at least the over determined allegory he’s wandered into. In any event, the way out involves falling in love with a hottie named Sofie (Eszter Balla), whose joie de vivre is egregiously signaled by her habit of riding the subway in a bunny suit.

– Nathan Lee

GIRL PLAY
unrated, 80 mins.

Relentlessly stagey (about 80% of the film is performed literally on a near naked stage), and inescapably tedious, “Girl Play” is uneventful to a fault. Performed primarily by the film’s writers Robin Greenspan and Lacie Harmon (based on their play, which incidentally is based on their lives), the film features the Madonna/Eve pair describing in dual monologues the circumstances under which they met and ultimately fell in love.

Ms. Greenspan and Ms. Harmon are, in real life as in the movie, stand up comics – though neither make much of an attempt to be funny. Their story begins when a flamboyant director, Gabriel (Dom De Luise, who is edited so that it appears that he’s almost never in the same room with the actresses – almost certainly because he wasn’t), casts the two in a play he’s putting on, as lovers. Robin is already in a long-term relationship with another woman, and Lacie doesn’t believe in real commitment, but during the rehearsal process, the two begin to connect.

Well, that’s great, but director Lee Friedlander (“Wasabi Tuna”) cannot get around the central problem here, which is nothing really happens, and allowing the action to be confined mostly to a stage only keeps things at a standstill. The two leads as well are not strong enough actors, nor do they posses a compelling enough screen presence, to make their story work on film. Perhaps this was not the case when they performed live on stage. Ms. Harmon’s sections are, to her credit, written articulately and likewise performed in something of an iambic pentameter, so she is far easier to watch than Ms. Greenspan, who goes through the motions doing the neurotic Jew schtick. Concluding inexplicably with five minutes of outtakes after the end credits have rolled, “Girl Play” is dullsville.

– Edward Goldberger